A Conversation in Rhythm is a tap dance piece exploring how dialogue can transcend what we generally think of as language. Tap dance is its own unique rhythmic language where dancers use dynamic sounds to replace words in order to talk to each other and convey a message. Through this piece, the artists challenge the norms of tap dance and place the focus not on flash but on musicality and creativity. The artists use dance to express what words often cannot.

Women’s bodies are highly regulated and judged in public spaces. It is often public opinion that if a woman is harassed or assaulted what she was wearing or her behaviour must be to blame. This performance is a reaction to the suggestion that women can protect themselves from attack through clothes that make them disappear in public. In thinking about how clothes shelter or expose women, Stacey adds more and more layers of clothing over the course of the performance, both to hide her body and to create a shield against both physical and psychological attack.

Secrets for Dinner is a participatory durational performance, exploring a character who consumes secrets. Participants will be encouraged to share their secrets by creating an impression of their secret on a piece of rice paper. Upon receiving the secret, the artist will not read, but instead begin to consume the secret.

Hand Bound / Tongue Tied examines the theme of dialogue that arises from chance encounters. Members of the public are invited to join the artist in creating a new audio and sculpture artwork centred on random meeting, discussion, and messages shared. “Given time and opportunity, in this case bound by a 20-minute handshake, I believe everyone has a message for everyone else,” explains Davies. Davies will create a plaster cast of the handshake while the participants chat and commune. Participants will leave with small sculptural memento of the experience.

A 1975 camping trailer is transformed into a mobile, room-sized camera obscura. The device creates colorful, moving images on the walls inside the device’s chamber, upside down and backwards. Available light and subject matter become site specific “stories” for viewers to consider and re-consider. All sights and sounds seen are ephemeral. No recording devices are used.

This exhibit presents extended drawing works responding to constructions of nature, animal, history and place by MacEwan University students for the national initiative LandMarks2017/Repères2017. Works were informed by research related to early sites of Fort Edmonton, as well as site visits and performance drawings at Elk Island National Park.

Inside and Out is a performative installation created by Kasie Campbell, taking place in and around a large scale sculpture created with the help of The Works Interns. The work deals with the anxieties and vulnerabilities the artist experiences as the object of someone else’s gaze. The large sculpture acts as a venue: viewers are encouraged to enter the tight, fleshy space and experience the all consuming feeling of the physical manifestation of those anxieties.